William Blake: Songs of Innocence — Themes & Social Critique

William Blake — Songs of Innocence

Songs of Innocence, written in 1788, shows Blake's effort to take his poetry beyond words on a page; he felt the poems needed to be illustrated to create his desired effect. It was a sign of his increasing awareness of the social injustices of his time, which led to the completion of his Songs of Experience in 1794.

Social and Political Influences

One of Blake’s main influences was the society in which he lived. He lived during revolutionary times and witnessed the downfall of London during Britain’s war with republican France. His disgust with society grew as he matured, and The Songs of Innocence and Experience depict this transition. As well as having radical religious ideas for the time — he did not believe in the “religion of nature or reason,” but thought man’s nature was imaginative and mystical (Lister, 1968) — he also had radical political ideas. Blake’s preoccupation with good and evil, as well as his strong philosophical and religious beliefs, remained throughout his life, and he never stopped depicting them in his poetry and engravings.

Personal Analysis of the Poem

In the poem, William Blake is principally describing a very corrupted society dominated by the power of materialism and by the contrast between upper- and working-class sections of society. It is written from a negative perspective: people exist in a dark and oppressive world, suffering the consequences of corruption from those in positions of power. The problem is that they do not realize this is happening to them. For this reason, Blake rejects the idea of an ideological or perfect place to live and wants people to be aware of the misery surrounding them — no wonderful streets, no pleasant people. A world with a very depressing atmosphere, where everything is poverty-stricken. All these ideas are represented in one place: London.

The final idea of this poem is the claim of a free society, without any chains, without any kind of ideological condition. The message is to free yourself from the restrictions of your own mind and its limiting conceptions in order to find freedom.